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South Africa's Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Singapore Management University Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Research Collection School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences 8-2008 Barking at the big dogs: South Africa's foreign policy towards the Middle East Eduard JORDAAN Singapore Management University, [email protected] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00358530802207344 Follow this and additional works at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research Part of the International Relations Commons Citation JORDAAN, Eduard.(2008). Barking at the big dogs: South Africa's foreign policy towards the Middle East. Round Table, 97(397), 547-559. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/563 This Journal Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Social Sciences at Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Collection School of Social Sciences by an authorized administrator of Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. For more information, please email [email protected]. ThisThe is Round an Author's Table Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Round Table, August 2008, 97 (397),Vol. 97,pp. 547-559, No. 397, copyright 547 – 559, Taylor August & Francis, 2008 available online at: http://doi.org/10.1080/00358530802207344 Barking at the Big Dogs: South Africa’s Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East EDUARD JORDAAN School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, Singapore ABSTRACT This article places South Africa’s foreign policy towards the Middle East in the context of the country’s general foreign policy. South Africa is classified as a middle power, given its penchant for international ‘bridge-building’ and multilateralism. With regard to the Middle East, South Africa has frequently offered itself as a mediator in the region’s various conflicts and continues to do so. However, the argument proposed here is that there is an ‘anti-imperialist’ strain in South Africa’s foreign policy that renders it unlikely to be regarded as an impartial broker in the various Middle East conflicts. South Africa’s middle power proclivities, as well as its anti-imperialist tendencies, are demonstrated with regard to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, recent events involving Lebanon, and Hamas’s 2006 electoral victory. KEY WORDS: South African foreign policy, Middle East, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq Introduction This article considers South Africa’s foreign policy towards the Middle East. While a few scholars have written on the topic (Benjamin, 2001; Hughes, 2004), the contribution this article aims to make lies in taking account of recent events in the Middle East and in situating South Africa’s foreign policy towards the region in the context of the country’s general foreign policy. Identifying the gist of South Africa’s foreign policy is no straightforward task, as commentators have struggled to make sense of the country’s foreign policy, seeing it as fraught with inconsistency, randomness, even incoherence. Nevertheless, there has been some convergence of opinion on the classification of South Africa as a ‘middle power’, a notion which, despite its conceptual fuzziness, helps us to identify a certain consistency to South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour (e.g. Bischoff, 2003; Hamill and Lee, 2001; Nel, Taylor and Van der Westhuizen, 2001; Van der Westhuizen, 1998). Middle powers are supreme bridge-builders and multilateralists that character- istically perform two important tasks in the international system: they try to increase order in the international system, which includes legitimizing the norms espoused by Correspondence Address: Eduard Jordaan, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, 90 Stamford Road, Singapore 178903. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0035-8533 Print/1474-029X Online/08/040547-13 Ó 2008 The Round Table Ltd DOI: 10.1080/00358530802207344 548 E. Jordaan the hegemon; and they perform morally commendable tasks for the good of international society. Given that the middle power category includes countries as diverse as Mexico, Turkey, Sweden and the Netherlands, some scholars have felt it necessary to draw a distinction between traditional and emerging middle powers (Cooper, 1997, p. 18; Jordaan, 2003). Examples of traditional middle powers include Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden, whereas Argentina, Malaysia, Nigeria and South Africa have all been mooted as examples of emerging middle powers at some point (Cooper, 1997). Traditional middle powers are wealthy, egalitarian, politically stable social democracies that are not regionally influential, while emerging middle powers are semi-peripheral, economically unequal, recently democratized states that display considerable regional influence. Behaviourally, traditional middle powers display a faint and ambivalent regional orientation and offer appeasing concessions to pressures for global economic reform, whereas emerging middle powers demonstrate a firm regional orientation and association, favour regional integration, and adopt, at most, a reformist attitude to the global economic order (Jordaan, 2003). As regionally powerful but internationally weak semi-peripheral states, emerging middle powers are perennially caught between the expectations of powerful states and their loyalty to developing countries in their region and beyond, whose loyalty emerging middle powers in turn depend upon in order to credibly and legitimately speak on their behalf. While the self-association and global position of emerging middle powers occasionally lead them into confrontation with the major powers, emerging middle powers cannot afford for these conflicts to be so vehement that they undermine their ability to build bridges and maintain order in international society. Despite its role and interest in maintaining the current order, South Africa seems determined not to be seen as a lackey of the West. South Africa is, after all, a developing country that strongly identifies with Africa and the ‘South’. Indeed, South Africa frequently presents itself as a spokesperson for Africa and the rest of the developing world. To maintain the allegiance of its partners in the developing world, South Africa has often felt it necessary to resist Western dominance on various fronts, a tendency Laurie Nathan (2005, p. 363) has identified as the ‘‘anti- imperialist’’ streak in South Africa’s foreign policy. While Nathan’s identification of an anti-imperialist element in South African foreign policy is useful, the term should be circumscribed in at least the following ways. First, South Africa’s anti- imperialism is very mild and does not venture beyond actions that are ultimately symbolic and which, at most, lend weight to the principles, interpretations and justifications of those who stand opposed to the United States and its allies. Second, South African ‘anti-imperialism’ is confined to resistance to certain powers and interests that show themselves during transnational conflicts of an ostensibly political nature. Concomitantly, South African anti-imperialism should be stripped of any economic connotations for, even though the country’s policy-makers sometimes ‘‘talk left’’, they certainly ‘‘walk right’’, in the words of Patrick Bond. This is shown by the African National Congress (ANC) government’s neo-liberal economic policies, as well as by South Africa’s role at the World Trade Organization, where US and EU delegations used an obliging South Africa to persuade other developing countries to accept their proposals (Lee, 2006, p. 57). The extent of South Africa’s official discomfort with the current global economic order has hardly been South Africa’s Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East 549 fundamental; rather, it has been limited to calling for a more consistent application of liberal economic principles and for measures to support those at the wrong end of the global economic scale. Third, South African anti-imperialism is also only aimed against the West—South Africa has of late been silent about China’s occupation of Tibet and its aggressive economic pursuits in Africa. Fourth, South African foreign policy is marked by an outspoken insistence on respect for the sovereignty of developing states (including the occupied Palestinian territories) to a point where South Africa’s position clashes with the demands, interests and actions of the West in the developing world. South Africa’s respect for national sovereignty also obstructs its ability (and its willingness) to insist on human rights and democracy, responsibility for which rests most heavily with national-level political authorities. Middle powers are characteristically eager peacemakers and the Middle East is a region rife with conflicts for a middle power such as South Africa to mediate, as it has attempted to do in the past. While South Africa’s past interventions led to no visible success, it has remained interested in mediating some of the conflicts in the Middle East. Although some distance from the major powers and from major conflicts is necessary to be regarded as an ‘‘honest broker’’ (Cox, 1996, p. 244), the anti-imperialist tendencies in South African foreign policy that have surfaced with regard to various conflicts in the Middle East have seriously damaged South Africa’s suitability as a potential
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